Bound By Blood
by thebluefeather
Summary: Because they've never been able to give the other what they need, but they've always been terribly good at taking what they want. {[Sirius and Bellatrix meet during the First War]}


**Sirius/Bellatrix sometime during the first war. Kind of AU because in my head they're pretty much the same age. Bella's a little older. **

**Implied Blackcest**

****There's a teeny tiny nod to Allen Ginsberg in here. Eternal respect and a big plate of cookies if you find it. **

**Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it. **

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Somehow, in the middle of that shit-storm of a house that stinks with the smell of the battle - ozone with the cloying tang of dark magic - they find each other.

It's been months, and this war has changed them both. Even with the residue of all the death - witnessed, evaded, dealt - stretching taught over their features like a second skin, they still look like warped mirrors of the other. Only now there's a hollow in their cheeks and mad glimmer in their eyes that was not there before. There's a wasted quality about them as if they've been sucking on shadows for their meat.

Funny how they pick their sides, blood striking them apart in more ways than one, and yet they still have the same horrors painted on their faces. The same bitterness burning their tongues and curling their lips. And that blood binds them just the same.

For they've both red hands and Black hearts.

They both dread the day when an outsider will notice they're not so different after all. Would it be their undoing? Or would it finally give them peace so they can stop _pretending._

If it goes their way, they'll never find out.

"Siri," she croons when he steps into the room. The affection is rotten as it falls from her lips.

He glances at the door behind him. The sounds of the duels on the floor below filter upwards in the old house. He steps further into the room and shuts the door behind them. No one knows they're up there, he realizes. This is what she wanted. She always gets what she wants.

"Bella." And her pet-name slides past his tongue with a rolling sweetness not strong enough to mask the bite.

They might kill each other. This might be it. Is it?

"I was wondering when I would get to see you, dear cousin." Her accent is refined, but the way he can feel her gaze slithering under his collar is not. Is it some form of magic? Or only the eeriness that comes when two minds are indulging the same memories in the same moment.

"It's been too long," he drawls.

She's begun to circle him, but he only turns to keep his back un-bared. It's never safe to have Bella at your back.

And that which hangs unsaid in the air between them is crippling. They watch like the predators they are, wondering who will bow first beneath the weight. There is a hunger in him that woke when he walked in the door, but left unsatiated it has turned on him instead. Something dark is chewing on his heart.

And to both their surprises, it's she who shrugs first.

"Sirius, please."

Please tell me why you left. Please come back to me. Please let's pretend a little longer.

_Please don't make me kill you._

And oh how he wants to reach down his throat and rip out the secrets that poison his gut to lay them at her feet. But he can't.

They'll destroy her.

And he's become attached to them. There's something so delicious about private torture.

So he does what he's always done, and reaches out to cup her face because she's somehow snuck close enough to touch. His hand slides down so his fingers curl around the back of her neck and his thumb drags roughly across her lip. She leans into his touch, but her eyes do not close because to her let guard down is to fall on her own blade.

But she sucks his thumb into her mouth, tongue swirling across the tip, teeth scraping at the edge of the knuckle. His sharp intake of breath echoes around the empty, dusty room at a pitch that threatens to shatter them.

Because they've never been able to give the other what they need, but they've always been terribly good at taking what they want.

His thumb pops from her mouth, and in the space of time it takes for that sound to fall on their ears, his hand slides into her hair and backs her into the wall. Their foreheads slam together - because they're always butting horns - and their breath is ragged and so loud that they're sure they'll stop the battle on the floor below just with the sound of it. They jump when their eyes meet like that to see the same grey, flinted and sharp enough to cut reflected back at them.

And they're _so close_ to meeting all teeth and nails and rough hands under skirts because they've never been the type to dance on the edge of anything. It's sink or swim, jump or fall my dear, and all they want to do is fly. But they've always strayed too close to the sun and maybe their wings started melting long ago.

They don't.

Because James' frantic voice floats up the stairwell outside and sneaks under the door like toxic gas - or maybe it's broken the seal on the poison that was already in the room.

"SIRIUS!"

They both jump and hold tight to each other, wanting nothing more than to run, but unwilling to let the other go first. But then she's struggling, spitting like a cat...

_"Let me go!"_ She hisses.

She twists her head enough to catch the fleshy meat at the base of his thumb between her teeth and she bites down. Hard. He pulls away, smarting at the sudden pain.

With eyes like wounds, he watches her smile with his blood on her teeth before she throws herself from the open window. She disappears in midair before she hits the ground and he's left staring at the pavement below, wondering what her body would look like twisted and broken down there from up here as blood steadily drips from his hand to the dusty floor.

"Sirius!" James gasps, crashing through the door. He seizes the second he enters the room - perhaps he senses the toxicity still lingering like a haze. Perhaps he _knows._

"Sirius, mate, you alright? It's time to go; we're the last ones. They got away." Yes, yes they got away. "What happened?"

What happened? _What happened?_

And he doesn't know how to answer because that's just another secret he'll keep flush to his chest because he likes that way it burns.

"Bella," he answers simply. And there's no sweetness this time, but the bite's fled too. Just a heavy word that drops from his mouth only to sink in the pit of his stomach.

James shakes his head. "Well let's get out of here. Lily's waiting."

Sirius nods, and makes to follow his friend. He looks out the window one last time and absently runs a hand over his jaw, leaving a smear of red that looks only black in the lengthening shadows.

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